Category: Personal (Page 2 of 9)

A brief history of the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah”, complete with sound clips and charts showing the rate of coverage.  I’m kinda partial to k.d. lang’s version and I’m not a big fan of her, normally.  And let’s not even speak of the Bon Jovi travesty or the Bono disgrace.  Or whatever the hell it was that Fall Out Boy did.

It may be a sign that I’m playing too many MMOs that my first instinct was to invent all new raid-related lyrics.

From this quiz:

I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Sorcerer (4th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-11
Constitution-10
Intelligence-16
Wisdom-18
Charisma-13

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Elves are known for their poetry, song, and magical arts, but when danger threatens they show great skill with weapons and strategy. Elves can live to be over 700 years old and, by human standards, are slow to make friends and enemies, and even slower to forget them. Elves are slim and stand 4.5 to 5.5 feet tall. They have no facial or body hair, prefer comfortable clothes, and possess unearthly grace. Many others races find them hauntingly beautiful.

Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Sorry I’ve been away. Things have been quite busy in my private life. Of note, the wife and I spent the break househunting, and just before new year’s, we put an offer down on a house. The house is awesome – a new construction home that someone else had built with a ridiculous number of add-ons, but which they then could not afford due to being unable to sell their old home thanks to the housing crunch. To add insult to injury, we hear that they managed to sell their house right after our offer was accepted. Continue reading

Lost amidst other news is news that Mass Effect has just gone gold. Congrats to my compatriots up in Edmonton.

I’ve spent the last week or so on vacation in Washington, D.C., which is my high school stomping grounds. The wife and I spent three days there, seeing the sites. You could spend a year in D.C. vacationing and still not see everything there is to see, but we crammed a lot of Smithsonians, memorials, and dodging whiny field trip groups (really, school is still in session?) into three days.

The real meat was a Boy Scout Troop reunion. I’m an Eagle from a troop in Northern Virginia that dissolved sometime in the mid 90’s. Our troop was a solid outdoorsy group, that went on High Adventure (12+ day) trips all across the country, including one 87 mile trek through California that remains one of the fondest memories of my life. The image below is of Mount Whitney, the peak of that trip. Continue reading